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October 19, 2012
Q. Are the following true or false? a) OMG! Emoticons R Older Than U Think!!! =-O b) We think of emoticons as a creation of the Internet Age
A. Actually both are true, though our connecting emoticons to the Internet is a flawed way of looking at it, says Sam Petulla in Wired magazine. The first Internet emoticon was quite recent, perhaps Sept. 19, 1982, when computer engineer Scott E. Fahlman posted on a Carnegie Mellon message board: “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(.”
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